


Old Habits

by joycecarolnotes



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: (nothing major or graphic), Coworkers caring for each other!, Emotional abstinence, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 07:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14564478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joycecarolnotes/pseuds/joycecarolnotes
Summary: Jared attempts to distance himself from Richard.Richard reminds him that isn't the kind of company they're trying to build.





	Old Habits

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something inspired by S5E6 before the next episode aired, and made it in just under the wire with 17 minutes to spare!

Jared snaps the rubberband against his wrist, shakes his head in self-admonishment.

 _Donald, Donald, not now_ , he thinks. _Not again. You know that you must stop this wretched, ruinous devotion. You've earned the trust of your captain, the respect of your ship's crew. You have something, now,_ he thinks—the COO job, _that you treasure more than life itself, and therefore you can not afford to lose it_.

Still, Jared can't help but burn with the worst sort of toxic, shameful envy as he watches Richard's new assistant— _Holden_ , he reminds himself; _tut, tut, Donald, it won't do to go getting so self-important, so vainglorious you go forgetting people's names!_ —prepare his morning cup of tea.

A snap for each time he longs to care for Richard. For each time he feels the words _I love you_ on his lips. A snap for each pang of jealousy. For each time his impulse to over-involve himself kicks in. A snap for each time he hovers, or wrings his hands, or second-guesses. He knows Richard is not fond of that particular tendency of his.

Holden waves his hand over the teacup. Blows on it twice, gently, to cool Richard's tea—Jared prays it isn't over-steeped this time—just as Jared had so meticulously instructed.

Jared is proud. Jared is also resentful.

 _You've taught him as best you can_ , he thinks. He sighs, long and deep. Turns sorrowfully back to his paperwork. He reminds himself to let these things go, that he has other, evermore important business to attend to. _It's time to let the fledgling leave the nest_.

\--

Today, Richard moves back to the hostel.

Jared aches to think about it. He has promised himself that he will not help Richard pack.

Jared sits on the couch instead, busies himself with some long-untouched knitting, and cringes at the heedless way Richard treats his possessions, as Richard shoves his things haphazardly into a duffel bag.

"All this stuff fit," he groans. "I know it fit when it was fucking... folded."

 _Darling_ , Jared longs to say, and he thinks desperately, shamefully, of the pleasure he took, mere weeks ago, in folding and packing Richard's shirts. _Here, my dear, let my take it from you. Let me make it easy on you. Let me take care of you, please_. He nearly jumps out of his seat to help, before he remembers that he's not supposed to do that. His momentary lapse in judgement earns him a painful, well-deserved snap.

Jared thinks, not without fondness, of the routines they've set in place here. Tea in the morning, dinner together, their faces in the bathroom mirror, as they get ready to turn in. He thinks of doing Richard's nails on the couch, watching a nature documentary. How he's had Richard eating better, and Skyping with his parents, and even—uninterruptedly, sometimes—sleeping in solid, seven-to-eight-hour stints.

Jared has slept well, too, and he's almost ashamed to admit it. Lulled into quiet comfort by the knowledge of his captain's exact, precise coordinates. How he'd curled up so happily, out on the pull-out sofa. How giving up his bedroom hadn't felt a bit like a sacrifice. And oh, how he'd thrilled at the thought of Richard dreaming peacefully, in the room just beside him, his back dutifully supported by Jared's firm, superior, California king-sized mattress!

"It'd be _easier_ ," Richard mumbles, "if I could just—"

Jared snaps the rubberband against his wrist again, before he can ask if Richard might consider moving in with him. That's not the sort of thing a COO should ask.

\--

This is the way it's always been:

With each success comes a different sort of failure. With each joy, great and unfathomable pain. Jared's happiness is never complete, never without its requisite suffering. For each thing he wins, something dear is taken from him. The dreams, the _name_ , the parts of himself he'd given up to come to Gavin, to Hooli. And before that. The decisions he'd made: who to save and who to sacrifice. How he got the best grades living in the house he wanted most badly to escape from.

\--

Old habits die hard, he finds, and Jared's impulse—still, however foolish—is to care for Richard. To entwine their lives together, both practically and emotionally. 

He finds himself reaching for a rumpled shirt collar, or fetching an unasked-for coconut water, or trailing Richard on a run to the restroom. Words of comfort and encouragement leave his lips before he can stop them. He spends long, lonely, sleepless nights fretting over Richard's imagined whereabouts. Could he be, right now, locked in a Starbucks bathroom? Has he fallen out of his loft bed again? Is he wading, at this very moment, in the pool without Jared there to lifeguard?

Jared hears two coders speaking ill of their captain, and his hand twitches at the knife stashed in his desk.

 _Not good_ , he thinks. _Donald, not good_.

He catches himself, that night, preparing two plates of tofu pad thai for dinner. He snaps his rubberband and puts one back.

Jared's wrist is marked now, striped red and raw and tender, and he treasures it for what it stands for, for all the things it's come to represent. The things he'll give up, the sacrifices he'll make, the torment he'll put himself through, for the good of Pied Piper. For Richard. To be the best goshdarn professional COO he can be.

Jared stands in Richard's office doorway. He tells himself he will not cross the threshold. That he will not go to Richard. That he will not—however much he longs to—lay a tender, posture-correcting hand 'gainst his captain's bowed, beleaguered back. Jared is sorry, he says. He won't be able to give Richard a ride home tonight. He's done his own work, you see, and won't have the time to hang around the office waiting for him.

The words taste wrong and sour in his mouth.

\--

It could be easy. It should be easy. Adept as he is at emotional over-engagement, Jared is equally proficient at getting over losses fast.

 _Come on_ , he thinks, _Donald. You've been through this before. You've given up. You've done without. You've practiced self-denial. How many days have you gone hungry? Abstinence should be old hat by now._

A bath, a shave, a Joni Mitchell record. A lemongrass-scented candle, a pair of freshly-pressed khakis. His favorite vest. His hair combed neatly. All the tidy, unremarkable, mannered order of his days and, Jared thinks, he will feel new again.

The trouble is, Richard is different, and he doesn't let go, not the way Jared expects him to. Where other people have let Jared slip away from them, Richard digs the keen points of his teeth in. He hangs onto Jared like he doesn't know his own cruelty, like he doesn't realize the insufferable torture he's putting his poor first mate through. Richard hangs onto Jared like he is—miraculously—someone worth hanging onto. He hangs onto Jared like he's hanging on for dear life.

Richard calls one night, just to talk, before bedtime. Jared will punish himself for this later; before he knows it, the sun is up and they've been talking all night.

One afternoon, Richard swings by Jared's modest desk. Perches himself, sneakered feet kicking, on the edge of it.

"Hey," Richard says. He waves a hand in the air. He grins, and it's wolfish. "Looks like someone's nails could use a touch-up. Heh."

Jared's stomach sinks. He cannot help his glance at Richard's fingers. Cannot help the way he flinches at Richard's bitten, tattered, painful-looking nails. He feels the familiar snap of the rubberband. "You could have Holden," he suggests, almost mournfully, "book you an appointment with a manicurist."

"Oh." The disappointment is naked, unguarded, there on Richard's fantastically expressive face. "I - is - is something wrong," Richard asks, tentatively, stammering. "Did I do something that. I don't know. Like. Offended you?"

"Not at all," Jared, truthfully, says.

"Then why are you - it feels like you - it's different than it used to be. Between us."

And so Jared tells Richard about emotional abstinence.

\--

Richard is right, Jared supposes. All this business with Fiona wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been keeping his feelings pent-up inside him—an emotional time-bomb—where they were bound to eventually burst free.

 _No matter_ , he thinks. _You'll simply have to be more disciplined. We can't have something like this happening again._

"How about we go back to the office," Richard suggests, "and you can make me some tea. That might make you feel better?" Richard's hand rests on his back. It is a gift, an invitation, a promise. So sweet, and so unexpected, that Jared almost forgets everything he's worked for. Almost abandons the promise he's only just renewed to himself.

"Richard," he says. They're back in the office kitchen. Jared's just put a kettle on for tea. "You placed your trust in me, and that is something that I cherish. I want to do right by you. By Pied Piper. And regardless of how I feel for you, you can't have a COO who lets his own emotional needs detract from his work."

Richard barks out a laugh, a little proud of himself. "You still don't get it," he says, "do you?"

Jared doesn't. He looks at Richard, his mouth turned down, quizzically.

"This 'emotional abstinence' thing." Richard draws air-quotes with his fingers. "It doesn't make sense. Not for us."

"Richard, how do you mean?"

"Well, you know how I said I wanted to make a different sort of company? This is what I - like - you don't have to be some corporate, COO version of yourself here, right? We're different. You know? We can be _all_ of it." He gestures, wildly, with his arm, around the room. "You can make me tea, right? Like, you don't _have_ to make me tea, but if you _want_ to make me tea. And, Jared, your emotions are a _good_ thing. Right? Right? I mean, they fucking _saved_ us, from that whole thing with Ben? And fucking Gilfoyle? They make me want to be a better person. Okay? And - and - and I know it's - I mean, it's not the same thing - not _exactly_ \- but I, like, I hope that you'll - I mean, all that stuff you told the rob - "

Jared frowns. "Fiona."

"Shit. Right. Sorry. Yes. All that stuff you told Fiona?"

"Yes?"

Richard looks down. "You could say that stuff to me. If you wanted to."

 _Oh. Thank you_ , Jared thinks. And, _gosh, I am so lucky_. He gazes down into the teacup, feels his eyes well up with tears he will not have to hide here. He wants to exclaim it out loud—giddy, love-drunk, wine-drunk, sleep-drunk as he is—as he removes the rubberband from his wrist, and strains his CEO's tea to just the right degree of tepid weakness. _How generous of Richard_ , he thinks, _letting me take care of him_.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also joycecarolnotes on tumblr if you want to follow me on there for some reason. Thanks for reading!


End file.
